We need food, not tobacco | Daily News

We need food, not tobacco

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced the 2023 global campaign for World No Tobacco Day on May 31 – focused on growing sustainable food crops instead of tobacco. This year's theme is “We need food, not tobacco”.

Food insecurity caused due to tobacco growing and production

How tobacco growing contributes to increased food insecurity:

* Across the globe around 3.5 million hectares of land are converted for tobacco growing each year. Growing tobacco also contributes to deforestation of 200 000 hectares a year.

* Tobacco growing is resource intensive and requires heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers, which contributes to soil degradation.

* Land used for growing tobacco then has a lower capacity for growing other crops, such as food, since tobacco depletes soil fertility.

* Compared with other agricultural activities such as maize growing and even livestock grazing, tobacco farming has a far more destructive impact on ecosystems as tobacco farmlands are more prone to desertification.

Any profits to be gained from tobacco as a cash crop may not offset the damage done to sustainable food production in low- and middle-income countries. Against this background, there is an urgent need to take legal measures to reduce tobacco growing and help farmers to move into the production of alternative food crops.

The Sustainable Agriculture Development Programme (SADP)

The Sustainable Agriculture Development Programme (SADP) which is a corporate social investment project of the tobacco industry in Sri Lanka has given subsidies and technical support to selected farmers to cultivate tobacco in home gardens, together with other cash crops and animals. There is no guarantee that the lands benefitting from the home garden programme will not be used to grow tobacco. Historically, market linkages between commercial tobacco companies and smallholder farmers have played a major role in farming decisions.

Farmers are more likely to opt to grow tobacco as they are protected by the tobacco company and its guaranteed market. Therefore, developing marketing contracts for a food crop will give the edge over a harmful crop, such as tobacco in terms of both the guaranteed income and food security.

Tobacco is not sustainable as a home garden crop

Growing tobacco in the mid and up-country areas of Sri Lanka has caused severe soil erosion causing downstream sedimentation, depletion of water resources, and a decline in land productivity. The National Action Plan for Combating Land Degradation in Sri Lanka 2015-2024 estimates that the soil erosion rate in sloping lands where tobacco is cultivated without any soil conservation measures is 70Mt/ha/year. It is the highest compared to all other crops. According to them, heavy soil erosion caused by tobacco cultivation has severely degraded the soil in areas such as Hanguranketha, Walapane, and Teldeniya in the Kandy district.

Tobacco crops deplete soil nutrients by taking up more nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, compared to other home garden crops. Therefore farming tobacco repeatedly reduces land fertility, resulting in low output and narrow profit margins from tobacco, which could affect the profitability of other food crops in the same home garden as well. Further, handling tobacco leaves can cause a disease called Green Tobacco Sickness that adversely affects farmers’ health and labour productivity. Since tobacco cultivation has many health, social, economic, and environmental consequences, it cannot be considered a sustainable home garden crop.

Further, unfair contractual arrangements with tobacco companies keep farmers impoverished, and the child labour that is often woven into tobacco cultivation interferes with the right to education and is a violation of human rights.

Scarce arable land and water are being used for tobacco cultivation with thousands of hectares of woods being destroyed to create space for tobacco production and to make fuel for curing tobacco leaves. Fertile land is thus being destroyed and cannot be used for growing much needed food crops.

In many countries where tobacco production and growing are consequential, the issue of livelihoods often comes as an impediment for the implementation of strong tobacco control measures.

“The tobacco industry is using the farmers livelihoods by creating front groups to lobby against policy changes aimed at reducing demand for tobacco,” said Dr. Ruediger Krech, Director of Health Promotion, of WHO, “We need to protect the health and well-being of farmers and their families, not only from the harms of tobacco growing, but also from the exploitation of their livelihoods by the tobacco industry.”

Farmers are often under contractual arrangements with the tobacco industry and are trapped in a vicious circle of debt. In most countries, the tobacco industry provides farmers seeds and other materials needed to grow tobacco and then later removes the costs from the earnings, which makes moving away from tobacco very difficult from a farmer’s perspective. But the tobacco industry often fails to give farmers a fair price for their product and farmers often fail to pay back the loan in full.

How Governments should create alternative livelihoods

Nine of the 10 largest tobacco cultivators are low- and middle-income countries, and 4 of these are defined as low-income food-deficit countries. Land used to grow tobacco could be more efficiently used to achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 – zero hunger.

Sustainable Development Goal 2 is about creating a world free of hunger by 2030. In 2020, between 720 million and 811 million persons worldwide were suffering from hunger, roughly 161 million more than in 2019. Also in 2020, a staggering 2.4 billion people, or above 30 per cent of the world’s population, were moderately or severely food-insecure, lacking regular access to adequate food. The figure increased by nearly 320 million people in just one year. Globally, 149.2 million children under 5 years of age, or 22.0 per cent, were suffering from stunting (low height for their age) in 2020, a decrease from 24.4 per cent in 2015.

Tobacco growing and production leads to long term, global ecological harms and climate change, and plays a crucial role in determining the future of agriculture and food security.

Currently, tobacco is grown in over 125 countries as a cash crop, over an estimated area of 4 million hectares (ha), which is an area larger than the country of Rwanda. The harmful effects of the cultivation on the environment are particularly apparent in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC).

According to WHO, “each day, a tobacco worker who plants, cultivates and harvests may absorb as much nicotine as found in 50 cigarettes.” Nicotine poisoning, also known as Green Tobacco Sickness GTS, occurs as a result of exposure to wet tobacco leaves during tobacco cultivation. Children are more vulnerable to GTS given their proportionally lower body mass to nicotine absorption. Avoiding nicotine poisoning when working with tobacco plants is difficult, even when wearing protective equipment.

Tobacco farming and the FCTC

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO-FCTC) provides guidelines in its Articles 18 and 19 for holding the tobacco industry accountable for the risks posed to the environment and the health effects of tobacco cultivation and manufacture.

l Article 18 (Protection of the environment and the health of persons): “In carrying out their obligations under this Convention, the Parties agree to have due regard to the protection of the environment and the health of persons in relation to the environment in respect of tobacco cultivation and manufacture within their respective territories.”

l Article 19 (Liability): For the purpose of tobacco control, the Parties shall consider taking legislative action or promoting their existing laws, where necessary, to deal with criminal and civil liability, including compensation where appropriate.

Article 19 could be used to hold tobacco companies liable for environmental damages and chemical exposures to farmers, as well as manufacturing and transport employees, consumers, and those affected by post-consumer waste.

The 2023 WNTD campaign calls on Governments and policy-makers to step up legislation, develop suitable policies and strategies, and enable market conditions for tobacco farmers to shift to growing food crops that would provide them and their families with a better life. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control offers specific principles and policy options on the promotion of economically viable alternatives for tobacco workers, growers and individual sellers (outlined in Article 17), and on enhancing protection of the environment and the health of people (Article 18). The implementation of these provisions should be strengthened in countries.

The campaign will encourage Governments to end subsidies for tobacco growing and use savings for crop substitution programmes that improve food security and nutrition. The campaign will also aim to raise awareness about the ways the tobacco industry interferes with attempts to substitute tobacco growing with sustainable crops, thereby contributing to the global food crisis.

The WNTD 2023 will serve as an opportunity to mobilize Governments and policy-makers to support farmers to switch to sustainable crops through creating market ecosystems for alternative crops and encourage at least 10,000 farmers globally to commit to shifting away from tobacco growing.

With partners, the global campaign will raise awareness about alternative crop production and marketing opportunities for tobacco farmers and encourage them to grow sustainable, nutritious crops. These crops will feed their families and millions more on a global scale, help them break free of the vicious debt-ridden cycle of tobacco growing, and support a healthier environment overall. The campaign will also support Governments in developing suitable policies, strategies and enabling market conditions for the tobacco growing farmers to shift to growing food crops.


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